


Chris

by Kathar



Series: Chris [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: All Roads Lead to Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comic Book Violence, First Meeting, First Time, M/M, pre-SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:28:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home on leave from Afghanistan, Phillip Coulson heads for Miami to spend some time forgetting the war. In the first bar he comes to he meets a guy with a sly smile and a killer body, and he thinks he's found what he needs.</p><p>Clint, though, has his own agenda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chris

**Author's Note:**

> My more-than-thanks to Beta J, who championed Chris from the start, has been patient with its vagaries, and helped me come to accept that this is a series, not a chaptered fic. You’re committed now, babe. 
> 
> Thanks also to [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte), for advocating for a coda. Smart woman.
> 
> On timeline and ages:  
> This is mostly set in the MCU (though pre-SHIELD Phil is influenced by Battle Scars), except that Clint and Phil have both been de-aged five to seven years compared to in-universe indications of age, for reasons of plot. In this, Clint is 19 or 20 and Phil is just over 30.

**Miami, 2002**

The other man was still asleep, head tucked under one endearingly massive arm, when Clint looked over as he was pulling on his cargo shorts in the early hours. On the radio, Art Bell was greeting the cosmos and his listeners from “the High Desert and the great American Southwest” to a beat that pulsed in time with the neon lights outside the window. They filtered through the cheap curtains, illuminating the edges of the sleeping man’s jawline in reds and pinks, pinpointing where Clint had traced his lips not so long before. Clint’s smile turned private and soft for a moment, hidden by his shoulders as he tied the laces on his boots. He felt the other man begin to stir. The bed protested and buckled as he rolled over, one arm flopping down into Clint’s range of vision.

“Chris?” he asked.

“Phillip?” Clint turned around, attempting to widen his little satisfied grin into a public-appropriate smirk. He was pretty sure he failed, as he saw the warmth in Phillip’s open, amused face. 

“Leaving so soon?”

“Well--” 

“I mean, you can, of course,” Phillip said, propping himself up on one shoulder and letting the sheets pool around his waist. The shadows of his bare chest in the near dark made Clint’s heart catch in his throat. “but I wish you’d stay just a little longer. I’d make it worth your while.”

“I, ah,” Clint swallowed and looked up at him, all his usual snark gone, “I think I could handle that.”

__

“A little longer” lasted past sunrise, and left Clint feeling like he’d been pounded so far into the mattress that springs must have gotten shoved out the bottom. Like Wile E. Coyote at the bottom of the canyon. He wanted to hold up a little sign saying “damn!” He wanted to never move again. He did _not_ want to take a shower, grab his shorts, and go do his actual job, but that was what he was going to do, because he was a professional.

Fuck you, yes he _was._

“So, um,” he said, peeling himself out of the bed, “still any hot water?” Phillip glanced over at him from where he was drying his short-cropped dark hair and grinned.

“Enough, anyway. I turned the coffee pot on, but it’s fucking hotel coffee so I’m not sure it’s worth it. Hey, listen... I was thinking....” Clint raised an eyebrow at him as he grabbed his shorts to take into the bathroom with him. “I know this was a one-night thing, right?”

“Yeah.” Clint interrupted him. It sounded harsh in his ears, and he tried to take the sting out of it. “A fucking awesome one-night stand, thank you.” He wasn’t sure about the thank you bit, but Phillip was getting this little crease between his eyes, and he didn’t think he wanted it there. Then again, he didn’t want... “Look-- I’m not in town for long. Just business. You understand.”

“Yeah, neither am I.” Phillip said. “One week’s leave left, that’s all.” 

“Oh. Okay.” 

“And nowhere to go but here.”

“What, no friends?” 

“The ones that matter are back in Afghanistan, and I don’t want to fuck any of them.” It was either the neon, or Phillip’s ears had gone shell-pink. Clint was fascinated. So fascinated, he forgot to do anything but nod. “So I wondered if you wanted to get together again tonight? Or, another time this week?” His eyes were roaming over Clint now, far more confident than his words. Clint wondered just how far down his own blush went, and tried to kick his brain into gear.

The proposition had... advantages. Advantages beyond just a less roach-infested hotel room for the night and the prospect of getting drunk on someone else’s tab. Beyond, even, the prospect of being flattened into a sweaty, overwhelmed, blissed-out pancake a few more times. He’d be off the grid here, hidden from both his marks and his employer. He’d have to be back at his motel long enough to see about stowing his gear, then, since he clearly couldn’t bring it here, and it couldn’t stay at the motel longer with him gone. There were ways around that. There were also ways to make sure he was free at the times he needed to be, and meanwhile he’d get an escort around town from a don’t-fuck-with-me guy with a Ranger tattoo. The kind of guy whose testimony people didn’t question, if he said Clint had been with him.

Plus, he knew how to use his mouth in a flat-out criminal fashion. Clint let a smile creep slowly onto his face and turn suggestive at the edges.

“I think we could work something out, yeah. As long as you understand I’ve got business a couple evenings, and most of the day. I can meet you at the Painted Panther at nine tonight.”

“Oh, yeah? You even old enough to get in there, kid?” 

“That’s not what you called me last night, old man,” Clint grinned at him. “And I’m not that young, sorry to disappoint you.” His cover identity was old enough to get into the club, anyway, even if Clint himself had a year or two to go. But he was confident now, hip-shot and eyes playful in victory. Phillip shook his head and grinned back at him.

“You haven’t disappointed me yet.”

__

The Painted Panther wasn’t the kind of place Phillip would usually choose to spend his time. He was struggling to keep his cool between the bass, the strobes, and the flash of bare skin from hips, backs, shoulders, clavicles, cleavage. Boys and girls and superannuated clubbers all merged into an underdressed and overly made-up writhing mass, and his own hips didn’t move like that. It was closer to ten than nine by the time he spotted Chris slinking his way through the dancers, impressive shoulders leading the way. 

His own protests aside, he was far too young and every inch of it showed in the way he half-grooved across the floor. Instead of pushing, he’d stop at the knots to dance, crowding against his temporary partner until they turned, then sliding into the newly opened space. Phillip could tell when Chris spotted him, because those light eyes focused in on him like a laser sight and his malleable lips went a little soft around the edges of his pout. It couldn’t have been deliberate timing that had him shimmying slowly up to Phillip as the lyrics groaned out _Ooooooh, I’m wicked and I’m laaaaaazy. Ooooooh, don’t you want to saaaaave me?_ ( _Tst tst tst tst tst tst_ went the beat, and Chris’s shoulders, and Phillip’s heartbeat.) 

And then Chris was snaking his way right up Phillip’s chest, and whispering (well, shouting) in his ear “Sorry I’m late. Worth your wait?”

 _Ever so lon lon lon lon lon-lonely_ whined the music now. Phillip slid his hands down leather-clad hips, knowing how foolish he looked: a decade and several thousand miles out of place and grinning like a fool. “Depends,” he said, over-enunciating in the hopes that Chris could read his lips if he couldn’t hear his voice. “You going to make it up to me?”

“You trust me?” Chris asked, laughter in his eyes. Phillip shook his head helplessly in something like assent.

“Let’s get out of here.”

As they wandered down the wet street together breathing in humid salt air, Phillip’s hand in Chris’s back pocket like some damn high-schooler, his head cleared a little. _You trust me?_ How to answer that? _I trust you not to roofie me. I trust you not to steal my wallet. I trust you to use a condom. I trust you to blow my mind six ways from Sunday._ That much was proven. _I trust you to make me forget what I have to go back to._ That remained to be seen, but the evidence so far was pretty damn good. _I trust you not to break my heart._ That was absurd; his heart had nothing to do with it. His heart didn’t work anymore, not after the last year. His heart wasn’t going to work for quite a while yet, if he wanted to survive. 

But he thought about Chris’s sandy-haired baby face, set on top of that damned lithe body with the chest, shoulders, arms that you didn’t get by accident and those fucking incendiary hands with their not-quite-familiar callouses. If his heart was whispering things, he wasn’t going to be able to hear them underneath the _shouting_ coming from his groin. 

_I trust you to give me what I need right now._ Work with that, forget the rest. And grab a little more of that fine ass while you have the chance.

___

It was several mattress-destroying nights later that Clint was finalizing the arrangements for his nest from the rooftop of the self-storage warehouse. The _pink_ self-storage warehouse. His only consolation was that he figured you just didn’t expect sniper nests on top of something pepto-tinted. It was not otherwise ideal; too much open space around the building, too few ways down, too easy to cover. But so long as they weren’t planning for him-- and he was quite certain they weren’t-- it would do all right. He had a line set up on the far side of the building, hidden in the space where a slim tower met the main body of the building. The ledge was otherwise high enough to hide him as long as he belly-crawled, and he could belly-crawl frickin’ _fast._

 _Just ask Phillip_. That... he hadn’t meant to think that. He was being professional now, although he had the uncomfortable feeling a real professional would have found someplace better to be. Still, everyone had to start somewhere, and this wasn’t quite precisely his first job. It was just his first time trying to be a sniper instead of the look out (or the guy you leave behind to take the fall). And the first time he was getting paid. Not paid a lot, but paid. To kill people.

He’d killed people before. Somewhat unintentionally, true, but people were dead just the same. And he could do it with a rifle, handgun, his bare hands, his knife, a sword, a bow, all kinds of improbable weapons, just as long as he could keep his hands from shaking. At least this time, he kinda thought the fuckers deserved it. 

_You can do this. They’ll never see you coming. They’re scum. Practically fucking treason. They don’t deserve to live._

_You can do this. Look at Phillip-- he probably kills guys like these every day. And he’s still nice. He’s still nice. You can do this and still be nice. Even if you can’t... you can still be good. And if you can’t be that, at least you can eat._

The transfer was supposed to go down in the alley across the railroad tracks, where the blank backsides of the Domino’s and the payday lending place faced each other. 

_Just do this, and you can go back and find Phillip. Have a shower. Get fucked senseless then ride into the sunset. Wile E. Coyote time, boy._

It was slightly before sunset-- and Clint thanked blind luck that he’d calculated correctly and the sun would be occluded by the high rises the next block over before it could blind him-- that his marks entered the alley. He had a scope, but didn’t need it to tell it was the same guy he’d tailed for most of the previous day. His shoulders were hunched a little lopsided, and even from here Clint could spot the stupid damned beaded necklace. His buddy was there, too, nervous as always, his gaze rarely settling.

_You can do this._

That couldn’t be all of them, could it? Somewhere, there had to be more of them-- probably in a car the next street over. Clint resisted the temptation to go check his escape routes again. He’d have to trust that he could get down and away before they could identify where the shots had come from, get themselves over the tracks and the fences, and spot him. 

_You can_ do _this._

So half the cast was in place; they were all waiting for the contact to show.

 _You_ can _do this._

When the contact came, he came from up the tracks themselves, along with his own entourage of two bodyguards, a couple look-out guys who slid down the tracks on both sides-- and someone on his tail. Clint wasn’t called Hawkeye because of eye color or state of origin. Even in the distance and the half-light he knew that face, those shoulders, that stride, that ass. _Of all the fucking luck._

__

When Sgt. Phillip Coulson had gotten leave, he’d called his Mom and Dad in Chicago. He hadn’t gone to visit; certain painful personal conversations were bound to recur and he wanted no part of them. That one brief call, in which he’d implied that he’d be stuck in training, had gone south approximately when his Mom had asked him how he’d liked the book she’d sent him. If they couldn’t talk about _books_ without someone breaking down in tears, anything regarding either his personal life or the war was going to end up looking like a Tennessee Williams play. (Seriously, though, Mom, why did you think _The Far Pavilions_ was a good read for someone stationed in Afghanistan? Well, yeah, it was fine up until about page 700. After that, it was just a bit uncomfortable. What do you mean, “why”? Didn’t you read it? Oh. Yes, well, it was long, and it definitely was both exotic and topical. So you didn’t get to the part about the siege? Massacre of the Guides mean anything to you? No? You know, I really don’t want to go into it any further. Oh, god, Mom, yes I appreciate you, it’s just...)

After a day or so of nothing much, as fucking bored of Fort Benning as he ever was (he already had a tattoo and he wasn’t that interested in the strip clubs), he’d picked up his backpack and hitchhiked his way to Savannah. He’d always wanted to hitchhike, even knowing he wasn’t exactly going to get a Ginsburg-level experience out of it. It was even less fun than he thought, although _soldier home on leave_ was a good ticket to ride. He tried to do some sight-seeing on the battlefields as he went, but it turned out he was too far south for most of the good ones, and he realized pretty quickly in Savannah that he just wasn’t much into Monuments to Glorious War anymore. So he grabbed a train and rode it south as far as it went. That, also, wasn’t as romantic as it sounded. It kept him moving, though, and he did so need to _move._

His first night in Miami, in the first bar he’d come to after he’d hit the waterfront and stopped, he met a kid with a sly smile and killer body and rough hands, and he did _so_ need to _move_ , and the kid moved with him so damn well.

It was almost entirely coincidence, as it turned out, that he recognized Manshour Abdul-Rauf’s uncle as he passed by the diner where Phillip was having coffee. Manshour was not exactly someone Phillip would have called a trusted ally in the War on Terror, Afghanistan edition, but he played the part to the point of obsequiousness sometimes. In return, blind eyes were turned to the exact contents of his more remote fields. His uncle had been in the States for years, but visited from time to time through some kind of connection no-one entirely understood with a company that had a supply contract with one of the private security firms.

In other words, putting the facts together and getting “opium smuggling” was grade school arithmetic. The forces and in play that ended up with Phillip following him and a couple of his friends into a dark alley by the tracks were considerably more complex.

In his head, though, Phillip knew it was still because he needed to _move_ , and he couldn’t shake his combat-zone mentality just because he was stateside for three fucking weeks. He needed intel, and there was no-one but him to go get it. Getting caught was not part of the plan, and it happened too quickly for him to know the exact moment he made his mistake.

Then Manshour’s uncle’s thugs had him by the arms, a gun to his head, and Manshour’s uncle’s contact and _his_ thugs had all drawn their guns, everyone was shouting, and the setting sun poured like fire into the alley, blinding the whole lot of them.

The next instant, everyone was staring up at the rooftops across the tracks. Everyone except Manshour’s uncle, who was dead on the ground with an arrow sticking out of his neck. 

A second later, his counterpart sprouted an arrow from his own neck, but Phillip was too busy mashing the heads of his two captors together to pay attention at just that moment. A few well-aimed kicks, and he ought to have been left with just two assailants-- no, one, because there went one more, down with an arrow in the gut-- but suddenly the alley was boiling with men. Phillip’s escape was cut off as those not immediately involved with trying to take him down were spreading out down the tracks trying to identify the mystery archer. _For fuck’s sake, this is America-- even if it is Miami-- where are the fucking cops?_ he thought, and glanced over at the pink building he thought the arrows must have come from.

Phillip, who’d seen a lot of improbable things in his life, was still not prepared for the moment the sniper arose from his nest, bow in hand, sprinted across the open rooftop, and flung himself over the edge. He appeared to hover for a moment, black against the pink. _Don’t look down_ the thought burst into his head fully formed, _you only fall once you look down_. And maybe the archer did, or maybe he didn’t, before he twisted in mid-air and was lost in the shadows of the tower.

After that, he was back in the press of the fight, and he didn’t have time to notice anything until Chris’s fist came flying past his face and embedded itself into the nose of an assailant behind him. Chris followed that up by driving his other fist, bow still in it, into the midsection of a short guy coming up on his flank. 

“Across the tracks,” Chris panted in his ear, “I got a bike.”

Across the tracks it was, and a quick vault over the chain-link fence, and then a scramble into the parking lot of the dive bar across the street. The sirens sounded from all directions just as Phillip wrapped his arms around Chris’s waist as he revved his motorcycle, and they peeled out down another alley and off towards the waterfront.

__

Phillip had tried to insist they go back to his hotel, but Clint was having nothing to do with it. Banking hard rights on reds and doubling-back every so often, he drove them until he spotted a little taqueria with no customers and only one tired-looking old man as staff. He grabbed a Jarritos-- his stomach was too unsettled for anything else-- and settled in opposite Phillip and his Coke. The old man didn’t even register, or didn’t find it remarkable if he did, their dishevelled states and general bruises and cuts. 

“You’ve really got to find a better nest next time, Chris.” Phillip said, then blinked and added “and thanks.” as if the gratitude had only just occurred to him. Clint shrugged off the criticism and the gratitude together.

“First time for everything. Got any tips?” The adrenaline was beginning to wear off of them both, leaving them sweaty and drawn, and Clint thought he saw Phillip hide a shiver as he considered this.

“Yeah-- no. Wait. No, I do not. Holy fucking hell, what the fuck did you think you were fucking _doing_?” 

“My job.” Clint took a sip from his bottle and held Phillip’s eyes steadily, until he settled back down in his seat, still smoldering.

“That is _not_ your job. You’re not an assassin, what are you? Freelance? You’ll be fucking killed. Who hired you? Archstone?”

“Y-yeah. Independent contractor, but yeah, how the fuck do you know?” Clint heaved a sigh and resettled himself, hoped that hid how he’d started slipping towards the edge of his seat.

“Fucking Archstone. I recognized the guy, Chris. Is it Chris? It’s not, is it?” _Nope_ , Clint mouthed at him. “Well, shit. I recognized the guy; he did some kind of liaison work for them. Bet you they either found out he was smuggling and decided to have him taken out in a way that couldn’t be traced back to them, or they were in it with him and he got greedy. What did they offer you? Did they offer to take you on if this went well?”

“Maybe. What’s it to you if they did?” Phillip shook his head, clearly buying time while he tried to formulate his response.

“They’re not worth your time. Their training is second-rate, their mentality is third-rate, and they’re mostly bigoted fuckheads. You’ve got too many morals to sign up with them.” Clint figured it was the first time anyone had said he had too many morals like it was a _good_ thing, and was temporarily diverted. “And you’re better than they deserve.” Phillip continued. “Where the fuck did you learn to shoot like that?”

“Circus.” Clint grinned at him, grinned wider when Phillip’s gaze went flat and disapproving. They stayed like that for several minutes, until Phillip visibly gave up, and Clint added “and Ghost Recon.”

“Fuck you.”

“You already did.”

“Look, you want good training, you want people who’ll keep you alive? I know a recruiter who’ll take a look at you if I ask him to--”

“Fuck. No.” Clint cut him off. “I tried that. Got kicked out halfway through Basic. Too insubordinate. Oh, and I had this unfortunate habit of fucking guys. Girls, too, but apparently that doesn’t count.” 

Phillip had the grace to flinch at that, but tried again. “If you’re so damn determined to kill people, at least try Mackenzie or one of the reputable merc-- security firms. I know a couple people there who--”

“You’re not really getting it. I don’t _want_ anyone deciding who I do or don’t kill but me. I need to be able to walk away anytime I want. Yeah, I’m green now, but not more than a lot of kids getting killed over there in the desert. I saved your ass, didn’t I? And I took out my marks, and I don’t want your help, and I will _do this myself._ It was good meeting you, Phillip. Stay safe and have a good life or whatever.” And he walked out, carefully not looking back to see if Phillip was getting up or watching him.

For the record, Phillip had put his head down on his arms and was going over his entire profane vocabulary under his breath. 

_I trust you to help me forget what I have to go back to._

Yeah, that worked out just fucking _great._

____

**Coda**

It was over three years later when Agent Phil Coulson walked into the office of the Director of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (which he only used in full when he was trying to delay the unpleasant). He had a bland smile on his face, a subdued suit that he wore like a uniform, a dossier under one arm belonging to one Clinton Francis Barton, codename Hawkeye-- and an agenda. 

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Soundtrack provided by: Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM; X Press 2 “Lazy”; Jakatta “So Lonely”
> 
> Stay tuned for Part II (Working Title: "Jasper")
> 
> I can be found on tumblr [here.](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/)


End file.
